


Hair

by anactoriatalksback



Series: I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love [4]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Also schmoop maybe? I dunno, Established Relationship, Hair kink maybe?, Introspection, Jared's hair is Important Also, M/M, Musing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 12:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12531788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: Jared's hair is his armour, part of the face he puts on to meet the faces that he meets. Richard likes knowing he can peel away the armour.





	Hair

Jared's hair isn't the first thing Richard noticed about him.

I mean, obviously, there's:

  1. His height. That apologetic question-mark he makes with his spine as he somehow looms diffidently over you. 
  2. His giant fucking hands, with those long slender fingers dancing over a keyboard, making Richard squirm in his seat for reasons he couldn't put a name to then and can barely do now.
  3. His wrists, those heartbreakingly delicate wrists peeking nakedly, _obscenely_ out of his button-downs, all...white and blue-veined and begging, _begging_ for Richard to...do.... _something_.
  4. His _eyes_. Those huge blue eyes that just...fucking...make Richard want to give Jared a new language, one made only of types of blue, a language in which Richard can be a fucking _poet_ , a language just for Jared and him.
  5. His soft voice. His relentless optimism. His fanatical love of...Pied Piper. And Richard (somehow, amazingly).



 

But yes, there's the hair. That aggressively side-parted hair, locked in place by fucking industrial-strength gel. The hair that's all of a piece with his button-downs and his cashmere sweaters and his pleated khakis. 

Richard knows Jared prides himself on how put-together he looks. He thinks it's a walking reminder to himself that he's safe, that he's all right, he has a job, he has security (or whatever passes for security at Pied Piper), he's a grown-up, he made it, it got better.

Richard also thinks it's - armour. More than that, camouflage.

I mean, look at those sweet blue eyes. Listen to that soft voice telling a Dad joke that has you pinned exactly halfway between cringing and giggling (maybe that's just you). The stoop of that long thin frame. The sweater. The chinos. The shiny brown hair with its surgical side-part. 

What a Good Boy.

What a Good Boy. What a Good, sweet, German-sleep-screaming, Nazi-quoting Boy. What a Good Boy, unzipping his sweater-vest to show you his beating heart, the indent between his chest making you weep as his fingers take you meticulously apart. What a Good Boy, offering up a fucking _parade_ of kinks in the sweet voice of a choirboy singing  _Pie Jesu_. What a Good Boy, holding you with those big Bambi eyes while his fingers wrap around your throat. 

What a Good Boy.

Not that Jared's doing it deliberately. At least Richard doesn't think so. And even if he were, would it matter?

The point is, Richard gets to see Jared without his armour. Gets to rake his fingers through that soft, meticulously-ordered hair. Gets to watch the hairgel relax its iron grip, to watch one soft curl escape and loiter in the middle of Jared's forehead. Gets to watch tufts of brown hair stand up, spring away at funny acute angles that make Richard's heart ache to think of a younger, still impossibly serious little Donald with skinned knees rescuing tiny birds and weeping when they almost always died, because what else happens to tiny birds Jared.

The last thing that Jared does, after he and Richard have had particularly enthusiastic sex, is to smooth down his hair. He pays particular attention to it, his mouth still, his eyes intent. Richard used to think he was...covering up, destroying the evidence, but that's not it, he's like _preternaturally_ happy to bear the marks of Richard's teeth or tongue where anyone could see them.

Richard doesn't bother with his hair. The great advantage of being a fucking shambles is that nobody can tell when you're a mess 'for ordinary reasons' as Jared would say, versus...

But when he watches Jared carefully, earnestly tamp down his hair, and nod to himself at a job well done...it's very hard to avoid the temptation to just...muss him up a bit. Grab him by the hair and pull him in for a kiss. Push one - just one - strand out of place.

'Richard.', says Jared, but he's play-annoyed, not actually annoyed. And it's such a fucking relief, in the storm, the sheer _weight_ , of his need for Jared, to just...dick around with him a little. To have Jared wag a playful finger at him, to bat him away, to capture his wrists and pin him...and when _that_ happens Jared's hair gets messed up anyway, so it's all moot.

And Jared's hair is armour also in this. While he is strapped into his perfect shiny side-parted helmet, his Brooks Brothers chain mail, he is his skeleton and his body is his home and he's always home and he never needs anybody.

Specifically, he doesn't need Richard.

Which is why Richard hoards the moments when Jared's got his head in his lap, and he's reading the WSJ or Wired or something, and his feet are kneading the pillows like he's the world's biggest kitten, and Richard's carding his fingers through Jared's hair and if Richard stops, Jared nudges a little against his hand.

It's the smallest, gentlest movement in the world. Richard doesn't think Jared even knows he's doing it. And that's what makes it so incredibly, unutterably wonderful.

Jared - _his_ Jared, who puts up and makes do and will never, ever ask for anything without agonies of mortification - Jared is asking - kinda _demanding_ \- Richard's care.

It almost - Richard stops sometimes, deliberately, just to feel that small, impatient little butt against his hand. It's _intoxicating_ , to be needed, if only in this small way.

Until of course Richard pushes it too far, stops too often, and the nudges stop too.

'Richard?', says Jared's voice, so small and so contrite and so kind, Richard can't bear it, he never ever wants Jared to sound like that around him, 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask you to - your hand must be tired, I don't mind - '

'No!' Richard gestures so violently he nearly capsizes Jared. 'I -fuck, no, Jared, I - I want to, I fucking _love_ doing it, I - you just, you just, I want you to - to want me to...'

And Jared is smiling up at him, so hard his face looks like it will split in half.

And gently - so gently - he takes Richard's hand and places it in his hair.

And Richard watches his fingers move through his friend's thick brown hair. He watches Jared relax, his long white toes flex and pull against the cushions. He feels like his fingers have closed a circuit, there's a current flowing from Jared to him and from him to Jared. Their own loop, their own energy, their own private universe.

'Stay like this for me', he thinks as he watches his friend's hair gather and fall between his fingers, 'as long as you can, stay like this for me'.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr handle is itsevidentvery. Come yell with me about these idiots if you would like!


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